Oscar Wilde Quotes

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Don't tell me that you have exhausted Life. When a man says that, one knows that life has exhausted him.

Oscar Wilde
I treated Art as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction.

Oscar Wilde
The beautiful, passionate, ruined South, the land of magnolias and music, of roses and romance... living on the memory of crushing defeats

Oscar Wilde
Whatever, in fact, is modern in our life we owe to the Greeks. Whatever is an anachronism is due to mediaevalism.

Oscar Wilde
Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise.

Oscar Wilde
When we have fully discovered the scientific laws that govern life, we shall realize that the one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action. He, indeed, knows neither the origin of his deeds nor their results.

Oscar Wilde
I can understand archaeology being attacked on the ground of its excessive realism, but to attack it as pedantic seems to be very much beside the mark. However, to attack it for any reason is foolish; one might just as well speak disrespectfully of the equator.

Oscar Wilde
Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws.

Oscar Wilde
Early in life she had discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of them quite harmless, she had acquired all the privileges of a personality.

Oscar Wilde
A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.

Oscar Wilde
Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly

Oscar Wilde
A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say at the age of eighteen.

Oscar Wilde
When I see a spade, I call it a spade. I'm glad to say I have never seen a spade. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use it. It's the only thing he's fit for.

Oscar Wilde
Facts fled before philosophy like frightened forest things.

Oscar Wilde
Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.

Oscar Wilde
The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

Oscar Wilde
It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the true explanation of the world, whatever may be the explanation of the next.

Oscar Wilde
Indeed, so far from being humorous, the male American is the most abnormally serious creature who ever existed.. It is only fair to admit that he can exaggerate, but even his exaggeration has a rational basis. It is not founded on wit or fancy; it does not spring from any poetic imagination.

Oscar Wilde
Greek dress was in its essence inartistic. Nothing should reveal the body but the body.

Oscar Wilde
Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.

Oscar Wilde
It is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologize to one in private for what they have written against one in public.

Oscar Wilde
What consoles one nowadays is not repentance but pleasure. Repentance is quite out of date.

Oscar Wilde
The chin a little higher, dear. Style largely depends on the way the chin is worn. They are worn very high, just at present.

Oscar Wilde
Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last.

Oscar Wilde
Poets know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.

Oscar Wilde
As for modern journalism, it is not my business to defend it. It justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest.

Oscar Wilde
Just as the philanthropist is the nuisance of the ethical sphere, so the nuisance of the intellectual sphere is the man who is so occupied in trying to educate others, that he has never had any time to educate himself.

Oscar Wilde
And suddenly the moon withdraws her sickle from the lightening skies, and to her sombre cavern flies, wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze.

Oscar Wilde
Only people who look dull ever get into the House of Commons, and only people who are dull ever succeed there.

Oscar Wilde
The poet is the supreme artist, for he is the master of colour and of form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and all arts.

Oscar Wilde